Shaking his head, Harlan commanded, “I want round the clock guards on Zia and a full security set-up on her house. No fucking gaps. If Julius comes sniffing around, I want to know about it before he even gets a look at her.”
Switching to a serious tone with ease, Atticus replied, “That’s going to be tough to keep from her, boss.”
“Not a problem. She agreed to it.”
“Really?” Atticus sounded perplexed. “How the fuck d’you pull that one off?”
“I told her the truth. She didn’t have a problem with it.” Dryly, he added, “Believe me, you can’t be more surprised than I am.”
“Damn. Good for you, boss.” A burst of air came through the car’s speakers: a reluctant sigh. “Gotta say, though, it’d make things a lot safer if she was on the property. I’m bringing Adriana up here just in case the sonuvabitch starts looking for her again. Couldn’t you convince Miss North to move in?”
Harlan swallowed as the roof of his mouth pulsed with a renewed ache. Gods, he felt like he could still taste her on his tongue — cunt and blood both. Fe felt full for the first time in a year, but paradoxically, his first taste of her only made his hungerworse.
She tasted like fucking ambrosia. Sweet and rich and thick, like deep, dark molasses on his palate. Her blood was the best he’d ever sampled, and her cunt…
Fuck me. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep today.
If he had his way, she would be getting a daily dose of venom. Maybe even twice daily, so long as he didn’t take too much at a time. It wouldn’t take long at all for her sleep cycle to switch.
And once that happened, there would be nothing stopping him from weaving her into every part of his life.
Voice rough, he answered, “I’m working on it. But you’re right to move Adriana back for a while. I was going to suggest the same thing. If he comes looking for me, he’ll definitely go after her, too.”
Julius’s budding obsession with Adriana was one of the catalysts for their move out of the New Zone. Harlan had always wanted out, but the moment they discovered Atticus’s little sister was venom neutral — the rarest of the rare, a vampire that could have children with another vampire — they knew they had to get out.
The old bastard was fanatical about vampirism and family legacy. If he could get his hands on someone like Adriana, all his fantasies of creating apurevampiric dynasty would take a dangerous turn toward reality.
Neither Harlan nor Atticus wouldeverlet him lay a hand on her, though. They had practically moved the heavens to get her out once. They’d do it again if they had to.
“No vulnerabilities,” Atticus said, each word hard and sharp. “That’s what we’re supposed to live by. No exposed weaknesses. I knew I shouldn’t have let her go off into the city by herself. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
“You can’t keep her prisoner, Atticus,” Harlan warned. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t breathed a word of her secret since they found out. There was always the possibility of discovery, and that drove Atticus wild with worry.
Harlan understood it, even though he knew it could inadvertently hurt Adriana. Clenching his fingers around the steering wheel, he grated, “We can’t lock up the people we care about, but we can keep our family safe when a threat rears its ugly fucking head. So bring Adriana home and get some damn guards on my anchor, will you?”
“Not a question, boss.” There was a rustling sound. A few seconds later, Atticus’s voice came from slightly farther away. “Hey, Damien, Vince! Put down your fucking bottles. I have a new job for you.”
ChapterThirteen
Zia wokeup the next morning feeling… different.
Not massively, of course, but there were definitely a few things she noticed. Firstly, she slept past sunrise. That was unusual for her, but not altogether surprising considering she spent the better part of the night trying to stay awake with her vampire. It didn’tnecessarilymean that she was already shifting her sleep schedule to match his, but her stomach still did a giddy little flip at the thought.
The second thing she noticed was the ache in her thigh.
It wasn’t terrible — like a charlie horse, maybe, or the strain of a muscle slightly over-used — but when she skimmed her fingers over the two small wounds, Zia was surprised to feel feverish heat radiating from her skin.
If she held very still, she thought she could feel her pulse beating there.
She lay in bed for a long time, her palm cupped around the bite mark, as she went over the events of the night again and again. It wasn’t the same as if she woke up curled up next to him, but the heat against her palm made herfeellike he was there. It captured just a tiny bit of that intimacy she craved.
Zia rubbed her thumb over the puncture wounds as she pressed her free hand against her chest. Her heart beat a quick rhythm. Magic popped and fizzled under her skin at the memory of Harlan’s touch, his raw voice, the way he tucked her possessively against his chest as she finally succumbed to sleep.
Is it normal to want to bond with someone so soon?
Of course, she was getting to the age when most witches bonded with a partner — romantic or otherwise. Human bodies weren’t adapted to process magic without significant degradation over time. For witches with a lot of power, a bond was an essential thing. It passed their magic through another being before cycling it back to the original host, nullifying the effects of magical overload.
Her parents had begun to worry about her finding a bondmate, but Zia hadn’t been in a hurry. She was only a hundred years old and not so powerful as to be at risk of burnout, the overload of magic that fried witches from the inside out, anytime soon. She could wait for the right person to trust with her magic.
